Big qualitative data (Big Qual), or research involving large qualitative data sets, has introduced many newly evolving conventions that have begun to change the fundamental nature of some qualitative research. In this methodological essay, we first distinguish big data from big qual. We define big qual as data sets containing either primary or…

This article reports on a review of empirical research published in selected higher education journals in 2008, which was focused on examining how often theories are developed through research. This review found relatively little evidence of theory development. Drawing on the notions of internal and external languages of description, it is argued…

In several subdomains of the social, behavioral, health, and human sciences, research questions are increasingly answered through mixed methods studies, combining qualitative and quantitative evidence and research elements. Accordingly, the importance of including those primary mixed methods research articles in systematic reviews grows. It is…

Increasingly, qualitative researchers are combining methods, processes, and principles from two or more methodologies over the course of a research study. Critics charge that researchers adopting combined approaches place too little attention on the historical, epistemological, and theoretical aspects of the research design. Rather than…

In this article, we set out to explore what we describe as the use of video in various modalities. For us, modality is a synthesizing construct that draws together and differentiates between the notion of "video" both as a method and as a methodology. It encompasses the use of the term video as both product and process, and as a data…